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The Philosopher's Corner 2005

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Zarathustra

*tries to think of some philosophical content to add in order to avoid death-by-Rik*....ummm.....nope. No luck.
:redface:

ZarathustraX

I didn't know I'd garnered a reputation as a tyrant. Hmm... If it helps, i do have cake? Only nice people have cake, right?

*wishes his reply slip would hurry up and arrive*

Reply 121

Reema

coldfish

So long as you're going to be there on the 16th, yes. I'm not all that worried about it either... I'm having a hard enough time deciding between York and Edinburgh as it is. What I -am- quite worried about, though, is the slight amount of Oxbridge elitism that seems to have crept in already. :frown:

I can't help thinking "Well, if Cambridge gave me an offer UCL are /bound/ to." :s-smilie:

I'm not a bad person, am I? :frown:

Alex

No you're not. Although I AM getting really worried about the slowness of Warwick - it seems everyone except for me has had an offer from that place *awaits rejection*. And I do want it as my insurance...ah well, it seems that York or Durham might have to fill in there otherwise.

Reply 122

coldfish

Durham and York are hardly poor backup choices. :P
Good luck anyways! :biggrin:

Alex

Reply 123

groovy_moose

Although I AM getting really worried about the slowness of Warwick

Although i have an offer for warwick, one of my friends is yet to hear from them, and technically they're better qualified than me, so hope is not all lost yet...

I will feel so guilty if they don't get an offer, seeing as cambridge and warwick were their first 2 choices, i have have an offer for both (although prob won't even put warwick as reserve) and they haven't an offer for either yet... :confused:

Reply 124

coldfish

A friend of mine has only recieved three offers, two of which were rejections, so far. She also has five A's, an outstanding reference, and plenty of natural ability and wit, etc. I can only presume that either she is not so good at interviews, or that she happened to be unlucky twice in a row. Still sucks, though. We'd done all of the planning together, chosen our colleges together, chosen our Uni's together.

Alex

Reply 125

crazydaveuk

coldfish

A friend of mine has only recieved three offers, two of which were rejections, so far.

Sorry, pedant at work -

Don't you mean three replies, two of which were rejections..?

A rejection is not an offer. 0_o

Reply 126

coldfish

crazydaveuk

Sorry, pedant at work -

Don't you mean three replies, two of which were rejections..?

A rejection is not an offer. 0_o

Yes I did. Oops. :P

Reply 127

DC_1234

as1

I'm currently studying Philosophy @ Cam (fresher)....

Hmmm... a 1st year philosopher from Selwyn with a name beginning with the letter 'a'. That narrows it down....

Um, like Andrew/Andy/Asha I'm also a first year philosopher ( at Sidney ) and would be more than willing to misleadingly answer any direct questions which are pressing on anyone's minds.

Hodges' Logic is certainly useful but IIRC it doesn't use the same notation as Peter Smith ( note; that which you will be expected to use in the tripos exam ) and spends an agonising time on truth trees using unatomised language ( in other words breaking up sentences into natural language components rather than reducing them to formal logic style (P^Q), Fx etc. While it's certainly worth a look you'll probably find Graham Priest's 'Very Short Introduction to Logic' and Peter Smiths' 'Formal Logic' are more than sufficient reading for before you're here, even if you only give them a cursory once over - do remember you're going to be having two lectures a week for the first two terms and they're aimed at the level of those who done no prior reading whatsoever; there is nothing more boring than sitting for two hours a weak going over a simplified version of what you already know.

If anything ( and if you've got the time ) I'd suggest you concentrate on the reading you WON'T have time for when here, rather what will be spoon fed you anyway when you arrive ( crack out the classics; As much Plato as you can stomach, Russell's History ( which is not to be /trusted/ but is certainly very informative ), Descartes, Hume, (Kant? If you're that way inclined), Wittgenstein ( though I wouldn't trust the tractatus either if I were you and what relevance it can have to musical theory god only knows ). More important though is for you to remember that when you're here you'll have all the time in the world to read philosophy texts, perhaps this may be the best chance you'll have for the next three years to brush up your knowledge of history, literature and the history of science ( all much more useful topics to have a knowledge base in for University Challenge :wink:

Reply 128

Reema

Faboba

More important though is for you to remember that when you're here you'll have all the time in the world to read philosophy texts, perhaps this may be the best chance you'll have for the next three years to brush up your knowledge of history, literature and the history of science ( all much more useful topics to have a knowledge base in for University Challenge :wink:

I found that a bit ambiguous, just to clarify...do you mean that it's the best chance over the summer for us to brush up on history/literature/science before we go to university, or it will be the best chance for us to brush up on it when we're actually there over the 3 years?

What Plato texts do you recommend in particular (I've already read the Republic but I don't know what else to read).

Reply 129

coldfish

I don't think I can stomach any more Plato, ever. Plato makes me angry. :frown:

I don't like to put words into peoples' mouths, but I think he meant that over the summer will be our last chance to read about stuff other than Philosophy.

alex

Reply 130

DC_1234

Reema

1; Now, now, now! You will have some time when here ( much to the chagrin of SPS students I'm sure ) but there's simply so much to do that sitting down witha view to trudging through a 1000+ book on European history would seem like a waste of an opportunity ( when you could be learning to Salsa, playing squash, listening to rants at the union, bettering your essex accent in the college bar or... I dunno... studying for the exams you'lll actually be sitting ). Free time exists, certainly, but it would seem to be at a high premium.

2; Probably the basic ones are best to do first ( if for no other reason than they do actually get referrenced on occasion ).

Meno - You will be doing this in first year, so it would seem to be the logical choice. Socrates, asked whether virtue is teachable, claims not to even know what it, followed by an odd ( and this is pure Plato, not Socrates ) discussion about how if we cannot know anything for sure just from examples we can know things at all - with the suspicious conclusion that we can move from a posteriori knowledge to a priori knowledge because before we were born we were in some way intimately acquainted with 'the forms' ( if you remember them from the Republic ) - the true definitions ( perhaps given shape, it is a little unclear ) of such things as 'justice', 'courage' as well as 'table', 'chair' etc. Many experts see this as marking the watershed between Plato writing aplogies for and true representations of Socrates and him actually propounding his own philosophical views.

Euthyphro - Socrates, on the way to stand trial, encounters an acquaintance who is attempting to prosecute his father for impiety. Socrates challenges Euthyphro to show he knows what piety is in the first place. This dialogue is interesting mainly for a nice clean example of the Socratic elenchus in action. "Are actions good because they are loved by the gods, or loved by the gods because they are good?"

Apology - Socrates, on trial for 'corrupting the youth of athens' and 'not believing in the gods that the state believes in' argues that, in fact, all he does is show people they are as ignorant and confused as he is. The athenians should thank him and award him a stipend of money for this service. This does not go down well at all. Really good for the personal history of Socrates and the justification of his actions. I'm not sure we can know how accurate it was. If you don't feel like plumping for a 'complete works of' then Penguin do 'The Republic', 'Euthyphro/Apology/Crito/Phaedo' and 'Protagoras/Meno' which really is more than enough to be going on with.

Crito/Phaedo - I know these don't go together in terms of when they were written but their plots do and they're both reasonably interesting - well worth a read. In Crito Socrates discusses with one of his closest friends whether or not he should escape from prison in light of his established views on loyalty and obedience to the state. I figure this could - like others - have been an instructory text as Crito's performance is so poor it surely must be deliberate. In Phaedo we have one of the best discussions of 'The Forms' - Socrates on his death bed tries to convince his friends not to worry as he can show to them that there is, in fact, an afterlife. Always take Plato with a pinch of salt - the Phaedo especially.

Protagoras - Socrates discusses ( respectfully, or have I missed some irony here? ) virtue with probably the most famous of the Sophists. Essential ( I would say ) for understanding Socrates relationship with them.

Gorgias - Gorgias is the man who 'taught' Meno. He's not really a sophist per se as he doesn't claim to teach virtue but rather rhetoric ( albeit rhetorical speeches often about virtue ). Socrates propounds the belief that rhetoric is, like cooking, all about titilation of the senses - all form and no content. He then gets into an argument with a chap called Callicles basically along the same lines as the one with Thrasymachus at the start of the republic ( might is right etc ). I'd have thought this was written after the Republic ( Plato thinking 'maybe I dismissed Thrasymachus too easily, and should review that line of thought' but I'm told that's not current thinking and rather this should be seen as Plato burying the issue before writing the republic and when coming to write the latter only giving it a cursory once over on the grounds that he considers it a done deal.

Syposium - Socrates gets wasted with some friends as they discuss the nature of love. How can I recommend this dialogue? Hmmm.... It's fairly useful biographically I suppose as Alcibiadies ( Socrates lover and important figure later in the peloponnesian war ) shows up towards the end to remonstrate with him but in general its just rather enjoyable. Socrates ( or is it Plato? ) feels that 'true love' is a philosophical love, divorced from physical manifestations. Aristophanes also appears in the dialogue which is interesting as Aristophanes wrote a play featuring Socrates ( the clouds ) and mocking him - though Socrates is really just being used as 'a philosopher/sophist' in it, and doesn't truly represent himself.

Other interesting bits and bobs.

Ion - 'Socrates does literary criticism' with a rhapsode.
Euthydemus - Two former boxers who have taken up elenchatic (?) arguing professionally take on Socrates. This is fun and almost certainly educational - Plato you remember, was a teacher and would have had to teach argumentative form as well as 'pure philosophy'.
The Seventh Letter - Plato (as Plato) bitching about his experiences in Syracuse (Sicily) with Dio where he tried to put some of his philosophical ideas into practice ( with hilarious consequences ).
Timeas - Plato, in later life, tries his hand as a presocratic and discusses his views of physics. Interesting talk about effluences
Critias - Critias ( who later goes on to fame as the ringleader of a pro-spartan junta who take over athens called the 'thirty tyrants' ) relates a tale told by an Egyptian priest to Solon about Atlantis. No, no. Seriously. All the talk about Atlantis comes - as far as anyone knows - from Plato. It is somewhere beyond the Pillars of Heracles ( Gibraltar ) apparently.
Laws - Dull as Aristotle. Perhaps duller. Some day I will finish reading this, perhaps after a serious spinal injury. ( not necessary ). This is Plato's more cynical reworking of his thinking about politics after his experiences in Sparta and ( possibly ) the last thing he wrote. It doesn't have Socrates in.

Odd things in general about Plato - We don't honestly know much about Socrates. All we know comes from Plato ( who for much of the time was putting his own thoughts in Socrates' mouth ), Xenophon ( a general and a historian who wrote some Socratic dialogues but - it could be argued - wasn't the brightest guy known to man and is questionable as a source ), Aristophanes ( who wasn't trying to portray the real Socrates, just some archetypal philosopher given a name everyone knew - which might say something of Socrates status in Athens; everyone knew who he was, but ot necessarily what he thought ), a chap called Diogenes Laertius ( who wrote a fantastic pair of books called Lives of the Philosophers not one word of which can be trusted as accurate - it's basically a collection of anecdotes ) and IIRC Thucydidies who records at the bottom of a page that someone called Socrates was chosen to be 'presiding-officer-for-the-day' on a day when the Athenians wanted to execute a general ( unfairly ) whom they'd decided failed to do his duty. Socrates refuses and the mob wait till the next day ( when there's a new president ) and execute him then.

Reply 131

groovy_moose

Hey, since you're there already can you give us some idea of what the work load is like? Or what a typical week migh be like? I really have no idea what i'd be letting myself in for... (presuming, that is, i get the grades...) thanks!

peace
Rachael

Reply 132

DC_1234

groovy_moose

Hmmmm... hard to say as there is a big discrepancy between

1; What I must do
2; What I do do
3; What I should do
4; What I (mistakenly?) believe other philosophers do.
5; What I could do

Having just filled in the academic review sheet I can tell you my approximation was about 25-30 hours ( and that includes lectures, supervisions etc ) but it depends what you would allow. ( Does reading for topics other than that your next essay is on count? What about stuff not on the course reading list? If I attend the MSC for two hours am I working? What if I fall asleep? If lectures count, do they still count if I find I'm not really listening? )

With the best will in the world work still operates based on a fairly dramatic curve between one supervision and the next. The first two days you feel motivated but don't do anything. The third day you feel unmotivated and do something else like the next logic assignment. The fourth day you feel slightly stressed and make a start on the reading listbut get distracted by something or other. The fifth day you do the bulk of the reading and start having minor panics when you think to yourself 'what on earth /am/ I going to write? Have I even understood the question? What did I actually learn from the stuff I read yesterday. On day six you do some frantic last minute reading, churn out an essay just before the deadline and day seven is the day of your supervision.

I'm sure that's probably just me and many of the other philosophers have a tight grip on the schedule but really, when you get talking to lawyers, medics or even ( bizarrely ) arc & anth students you realise how little work you are actually FORCED to do. I can imagine it would be possible to coast doing only the bare minimum ( about a days work for each essay and the bi-weekly logic sheet ) but it wouldn't be recommended. You're really expected to police yourself and so I'd imagine how much work you actually do is about up to you.

Let's say ( hard to estimate these things ) that it takes you about three hours to read 100 pages and the average reading list per essay is around 500 pages. Add to that the 10 hours spent in lectures or discussion groups, an hour for each supervision and about an hour or so for each logic sheet. You get a ballpark figure of 27 hours ( this is where I drew my estimate mentioned earlier ).

In practice you do more work than that but if I'm honest that is the amount of time your work actually NEEDS to take. In my view its dishonest to claim to spend an hour working when you're actually talking about an hour pissing about finding petty excuses not to work but I'm sure my view differs from that of others - we shall see when I get feedback from the review form :biggrin:

As a philosophy student you'll have more free time than practically everyone but it is only free in so far as you don't NEED to be working during it. It's easy to find time to attend debates at the union, row, take dancing classes, learn a foreign language, spend inordinate amounts of time in the college bar, act, write, read stuff from other subjects which interests you. The demands on your time are fairly lax. Call it on average around five-six hours a day but you're more than likely to find this time bunches together in a manner of speaking ( 4 hours one day, 10 later that week ).

If this isn't particularly instructive I'm perfectly willing to take a note of everything I do for a week ( 'a week in the life of a cambridge philosophy student' ) but I cannot garuntee how illustrative or indeed how edifying. The biggest problem of being a philosopher is you don't have many others to compare yourself to as you're unlikely to find yourself in a college with more than three in your year ( the average is two ). I can tell you the other Sidneyite probably works harder than I do, certainly she tends to get her essays done well before the deadline, rather than my standard practice of 'in the nick of time'.

Reply 133

coldfish

Recently I've been having minor panics about the workload, after seeing the stress that a friend of mine in his 2nd year of a History degree is under at the moment. Surely normal people don't even think about this kind of thing until AFTER they're at University, and are concentrating on A levels at the moment? :/

alex

Reply 134

DC_1234

coldfish

A historian under stress? Take pictures! Photographs of rarities are often valuable.

Reply 135

Reema

To what extent is Philosophy viewed at Cambridge as a "doss subject"? When I was at Girton, a Law student spoke....rather contemptuously? of Philosophy, claiming that a philosopher he knew did the "bare minimum" of work - I felt rather uncomfortable about that since I'm really quite passionate about it, and I'm not sure I'll be altogether happy with people like that who look down on my subject?

Reply 136

DC_1234

Reema

I have a certain amount of respect for that opinion coming from a LAW students; law is the only other subject with a reading list as hard to comprehend as philosophy.

I'd say short answer; it isn't. In fact the sole and only reason I applied to oxbridge was that it was perhaps the only place in the country where philosophy is actually taken seriously ( don't mean to defame Durham, UCL etc but it's an opinion I still broadly hold ) and Oxford don't deem the discipline worthy of exclusive study ( philosophy and maths, PPE, philosophy and literature(?) etc but not straight B.A Philosophy (Oxon) to be had it would seem.

Generally, especially in first year, the knowledge any student has about other subjects is so shockingly limited that misperceptions are bound to occur. I live opposite an engineer who appears to do no work but if I was to infer from this that no engineers do any work I would be mistaken ( quite the reverse in many cases ). Philosophy has the mixed blessing of being viewed as one of two extremes, either a subject so complicated you must be a genius to study it or as a complete waste of time where people just talk *******s all day and no work is required. Sadly, neither of these perceptions is correct.

I'd say the safest characterisation I could give you is that it is easy to coast in a humanity and easy to excel in a science. If you are studying a science the amount of work that you MUST do is relatively substantial but - and contradict me if I'm wrong here - your likelihood of success is directly proportional to the amount of work you put in. In a humanity the opposite is true. If you do no more than the minimum required your actual workload is so slight that the general perception that 'philosophers do no work' would hold water. Unfortunately to do WELL is extremely difficult ( in fact, I'm not entirely sure that there is a surefire strategy. If anyone comes across one would they let me know? ). I have no problem believing that plenty of people are able to get a 3 or even a 2:2 in philosophy ( indeed, perhaps in any humanity ) without breaking a sweat, but the statistic I was given was that only 5% get 1s. In a year of 30 people, that is one or two. This doesn't quite tally with the other figure I was given that in an average year 'only three people get 1s' but in any event the salient point is obvious; it is very difficult in philosophy to get a one.

I'm guessing your lawyer was just ignorant. The philosophers at Girton have Arif Ahmed as a supervisior, and he's much to smart not to notice if they haven't been doing any work and are just trying to bullshit him. Lawyers it must be said have it pretty tough as far as workload goes ( I still remember by horror at hearing a lawyer describe how glad he was he only had to read 80 pages that night for an essay due at 6am that morning; having found a parliamentary synopsis for certain constitutional law statutes he'd been assigned to read ). But if the lawyer's perception is correct then the practice of the Girtonite is certainly not something you should emulate if the reason you're thinking of coming here is - as it should be - that you have a genuine love for the subject and want to learn more about it.

Reply 137

Kid A

Faboba

I'd say short answer; it isn't. In fact the sole and only reason I applied to oxbridge was that it was perhaps the only place in the country where philosophy is actually taken seriously

Well, having studied Philosophy for a while at Glasgow, I can tell you that they don't mess about. And they seem extremely proud of the Philosophy department (and with good reason, obv.). Thought maybe I'm biased because my brother and his girlfriend both have 1st in it.

Reply 138

DC_1234

Kid A

Like god, but with less brimstone.

How goes it with you?

Reply 139

Kid A

Faboba

Like god, but with less brimstone.

How goes it with you?

It goes well. The sheer tonnage of stuff I have to read could stop a herd of highly erudite Oxen in its tracks, however. Reading plays where Shakespeare really dropped the ball is fun, mind you. You really should try out WebMSN - I demand to know if you're still wearing underwear, among other things.

At Easter, Pert is planning some SERIOUS BUSINESS for his birthday. I trust you'll be up to witness the unfettered debauchery, happenstance and ribaldry that will doubtless occur. Unless Montaigne interfers.